How to look into someone’s eyes

How to look into someone’s eyes and cure all forms of social anxiety using Auto Suggestion, the steps….

I am just passing on the knowledge I have acquired from beating this problem. Loads of people have commented at the bottom and some have been successful, so try these steps, you can beat this!….

If you can’t look someone in the eyes, what you have is fear. There are many variations of this fear. You could have a fear of what people may see when they look in your eys or you have an inferiority complex. I have come to realise that the root cause of my problem was an inferiority complex and that was preventing me from looking in someones eyes. I suffered terribly with this problem for well over 10 years, then I had had enough, I couldn’t take any more. All of a sudden I came extremely driven in sorting myself out, I got really forceful with myself and began commanding a phrase to myself over and over, my phrase at the time was “I am not scared of anyone or anything”. I really pushed this through my mind for days. Then one day, this particular person who had been dragging me down, mainly due to my eye contact problem started talking to me from the side. I said to myself “I am NOT SCARED” lifted my head, looked in one eye and felt No Fear! The rush of relief was indescribably amazing. I have since used this technique for the last 15 years, using different phrases for different negative feelings and it works!

It’s your fear that must be conquered before you will be able look someone in the eye……

Here are the steps…..

The first step is to realise that many other people suffer with this problem. Therefore, it is not YOUR personality, it is something to do with the way you think and feel and this is what must change. There are many anxiety forums, with hundreds of people on there, all with the same problem and you can find the links to some of them in the links section.

Step 2. Re-condition your mind. This is the most important part and must be followed to the letter! You have to repeat to yourself an instruction. Think of what is causing your anxiety or what is preventing you from looking in peoples eyes and create a phase to combat the feeling. Try to keep the message as positive as possible (I have since learnt this helps). Try something like “I am fearless, I am proud to look people in the eye!”. It is important to find what works best for you. You must repeat your phrase to yourself, with conviction, at every available opportunity, as many times as possible. i.e. when you wake up, brushing your teeth, driving your car, walking to the loo, while on the loo and any other time you can. You must however really force the instruction through your mind.

Step 3. Do this for two weeks.

Step 4. Now you should hopefully be ready to look someone in the eye and feel much better when doing it……….. On the fourteenth day, nearing mid morning (or a time of day when you feel better than you normally do), when someone tries to talk to you, repeat to yourself the instruction, “I am completely fearless of anyone or anything!” and do it while they are speaking. If they say something amusing/or you feel more comfortable than you normally would, now is the time, lift your head, smile and look them in the eye. Choose one eye and try to smile with eyes as well as your mouth.

Step 5. If when looking in their eye, the fear starts to creep back, say to yourself,“I am not scared!” and say it with extra conviction, look away if you need to and say it again.

Step 6. If they do not say anything funny and/or you don’t feel comfortable, wait for the right opportunity and go for it!

Step 7. If you keep repeating to yourself the instruction, you will eventually be able to look anyone in the eye, at any time you want and feel a lot more comfortable.

Step 8. Use this method of suggesting instructions to yourself positive messages like, “I am a good person, I will be successful, I enjoy speaking to people” and so on.

If you feel you know specifically what your fear is, i.e. you believe people think you are boring, or look funny, sound stupid etc, you can change the instruction to suit your problem and once one issue is dealt with, alter it again.

I have since discovered that this process has a name and has been around for a long time, it is called Auto Suggestion. You are using Auto Suggestion right now without even thinking about it. There are 2 parts to your mind. There is the front part, that you think quickly with, which is the bit with which you see the surrounding world. This part feeds your subconscious mind. You can think of your subconscious mind as a massive store room where information gets filed and organised. Once enough information is available, it is used by the front part of your mind, to make you act and feel the way you do. Therefore, if you are constantly feeding negative messages about yourself to your subconscious mind it is inevitable that you will feel bad. So use the steps mentioned above to feed your subconscious mind a positive message and you will overcome and even achieve anything!

These steps are very important but there are other things to think about that will help with the above and these are here.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me now. You will believe yourself, if when you say it, you say it with conviction and do it as I have explained above. I would love to hear how you get on with this process, whether you are successful or not. So please leave your comments.

Please comment, your details wont be used for spam, or be displayed on here.

Ben

39 thoughts on “How to look into someone’s eyes”

Comment navigation

Hi Ben. thank you very much for your help and your time I am 27 years old i am a shy person not a social person i don’t smoke anything I’ve had this problem for about 1 year now ( eye contact ) i am not sure if it’s fear but every time i look at someone it’s like i don’t look in to them normal, i look straight into their souls or something and that could freaks them out, i can’t focus on what they are saying to me and i keep moving my eyes looking away instantly which is bad and rude and stupid .. i decided to get ride of this problem and find a solution as soon as i can before it destroys my whole life, first i thought that i am the only one whose suffering with this problem but when i searched about it on the internet i found that many other people suffer with the same problem, thanks god am not the only one.. i will try your instructions starting from this moment … i found this instructions also I will give it a try i hope these help: http://www.wikihow.com/Look-People-in-the-Eye sorry for my weak English and thanks again Ziad

Hi Ziad Sorry, I vet all the comments as I get a lot of spam and I have been on holiday. Looking at someone and feeling as though you are looking into their soul can be a good thing. However, people do pick up on slight changes in your fascial expressions, so staying strong and having no fear, whilst remaining calm should help you to carry on with conversations. Let me know how you get on and if I can help anymore Cheers Ben

Hi Ben, I’m glad you created this site and you are willing to help. But please bear with me when I say that, when I look at people, I think of myself as like a deer in headlights. I believe my problem is that, I don’t really know how I should keep my face composure, when to blink, or how long I’m supposed to look at the person. It’s really embarrassing and really limiting my growth as a human being. I’m surprised at how many other people have the same exact problem but I do wonder if there are varying degrees of this problem. For instance, I have several problems: – I’m boring – I’m tired, tired to even smile. – I usually have tired eye look. – I lack things to say, so conversations usually end real short. So within first few minutes, other guy usually tries to find ways to end our conversation, like says gotta go some emergency came up while taking a deep breath, which really infuriate me. Due to all this, when I am staring at the other person, I get the feeling that he doesn’t want to communicate with me no more. And he will feel weird because I keep staring at him with nothing to say back. I’m guessing I have more to overcome than just to “not be afraid of anything”. It seems I need to be stating in my head “I’m not boring, I’m funny”. But that doesn’t help me much because I still don’t know what to say. Do you have any suggestion for me?

Hi there Thanks for your comment. Can I start with saying that you are definitely not boring, I can tell this by the articulate and interesting way you have written your message above. You have brought up an interesting point here and you are exactly right, there are many forms of the fear, which results in not being able to maintain eye contact. Since starting this blog, I realised I had a fear of being inferior to the person/people I was talking to. Therefore, I altered the instruction to something like “I will not have any fear of Judgment”. I repeated this, really forcing it through my mind, as much as I could. I also made sure I said the instruction just before entering into a social situation and it worked and it was a liberating feeling! When I was really suffering with not being able to make eye contact, I was desperate, my head was in bits and I knew something had to change! One day I decided that if I repeated to myself, I will not be scared of anything, it might help me overcome my fear and to my surprise it did! So yes, change the instruction to deal with a more specific problem. Once one problem is dealt with, change it again. Whatever the problem is, it is happens because of the fear of it happening. From what you have said in your message, it is easy to see that you are using the method I have described (which is known more widely as Auto Suggestion) in a negative way, without even thinking about it. You have convinced yourself that you are boring and you have done this by telling yourself you are. Remember, your conscious mind (what you are reading this with) feeds your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind makes you act and feel the way you do. Therefore, if you use Auto suggestion to feed your subconscious mind a positive message and it will eventually act, this is a fact! To help others, I wonder if you could keep a diary and send it me at the end of the each week? I will send this as an email so you can reply to me on there. I really hope this helps! Cheers Ben

This person replied by email and I had to show you all that this does work!!!! Hi Ben, First of all, thank you thank you thank you. It’s strange, all of a sudden now I have no fear of eye contact whatsoever. It was all in my head and I think your suggestion helped me to get the strength to overcome it. I also followed some advice of staring between the eyes of other people which seems to do the trick. Wow, now time to get out in the world and see what I been missing all my life! Thanks.

Hi I am absolutely over the moon for you, this news has made me smile all day!!! I’m also made up that I have helped in some way. It just shows how you can use this method to get over any fear. Fear is an enemy (a week one at that) and can easily be defeated once you know how! Please keep me posted with how your life changes over the coming months/years! Cheers

Hi Chris In what way are you still struggling. What happens when you try to look at someone? Have tried to remove the fear with the steps? You may need to alter the message you give to yourself. I look forward to hearing from you. Cheers Ben

Hi Ben Its difficult to point a finger on what I feel, only a deep feeling of dread that can paralyse when someone looks at me and catches me off guard….I am always so hypervigilant which makes eye contact a concious act rather than a natural and subconscious act. I do well to carry on regardless but its always a matter of coping rather than overcoming. I am not sure what I could tell myself because I dont seem to be consciously saying anything to myself when I encounter people, although i do beat myself up for feeling bad about every interaction. Chris

Hi Chris Before I carry on, let me say that this fear you have will fade naturally over the years. As people get older they care less what others think of them. Not caring too much about what others think of you is very liberating, so please take hang on in there as you will get over this naturally (even if it does take a long time). However, the process I have described can speed things up dramatically. What you have described above is exactly how I felt and I did not know what was wrong with me or what was making me feel so bad (like you say, filled with dread) every time someone looked at me. Things at work had became dreadful, I knew people were talking about me and at the time it really hurt (I used to care a lot what people thought of me). I knew I had to do something. Something was telling me I was scared. I was desperate, so I began focusing all my anger an desperation through the phrase “I will not be scared of anything or anybody”. I blocked out all other thoughts and I saw myself as the pupil being instructed over and over again. I did not focus on the phrase itself, I was simply saying the words in my head so my subconscious mind would listen and eventually it did. If you are hyper-vigilant of people around you, I think you are scared that others might see that you are scared. So you are on a vicious circle. The main word here is SCARED. You are bound by the confines of fear and you need to release yourself. You could even try instructing to yourself this “I WILL NOT BE HYPER-VIGILANT”. Remember this fact – your conscious mind sees, hears, and instructs your subconscious mind, your subconscious mind makes you act ad feel the way you do. So you can tell your subconscious mind anything and eventually it will act. As I have said before, this is called Auto Suggestion, there is a great book called Think Rich Grow Rich, which has a great section on Auto Suggestion this is a link for a free copy of the book here https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&ved=0CFAQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.soilandhealth.org%2F03sov%2F0304spiritpsych%2F030413.hill.think.and.grow.rich.pdf&ei=MYqMUb2uOMy3hAeJoIDYCA&usg=AFQjCNE2MMAIeJcWn98SvVz8LJak3nRxzw&sig2=OxuK8xRtjQIxQn-hegXrqQ&bvm=bv.46340616,d.ZG4. See how you get on for 2 more weeks and get back to me. Cheers Chris, I know you can beat this. Ben

Hi name esh and I been suffering wit this problem since I was a little girl. I’m 36 now and growing up I was popular I was a dance choreographer I was friends with bullys and geeks. Everyone loved me but at 16 everything changed I started panicking also. Hell looking into eyes became nothing at that time. At at 25 and on panic attacks became obsolete but looking into eyes, face, lips, whatever became the big problem again. It’s to a point now that when ppl talk I look elsewhere and when I talk I look elsewhere that ppl ask me who I’m talking to cause there over here. I can’t do job interviews. It’s bad. Ima use what u said to do I hope I work.

Hi Aisha. I am really sorry for the late reply, I get so much spam I keep missing genuine posts. Did you get anywhere with the steps? You should have a look at my new page on meditation and mindfulness I think it will really help you too. Please get back to me. I would really like to know you are O.K. as I know this problem can be defeated. Cheers Ben